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Zynga Restructures Offices Following Poor End to 2012

The struggling online games maker, Zynga (News - Alert), has announced that it has taken some steps to become more efficient with its resources.

After a fourth quarter of 2012 that showed some real problems in the way it was operating, the company announced that the former chief game designer at Zynga has stepped down – the first step in a wave of moves that includes closing one of its studios, and consolidating several others that are geographically close to one another.

Zynga’s plan to shut down the Baltimore studio and consolidate locations in three other cities will mean about 1 percent of its total workforce will have to be laid off. The company also shut down the most well-known game that Brian Reynolds (former CGD) and the Baltimore studio were responsible for making.

Cityville 2 was never as successful as the company hoped, and it has now scrapped it entirely.

As far as the consolidations go, the two Austin studios are being merged into one, two Zynga studios located in New York City will integrate and the studio in McKinney, Texas will be absorbed by the location in Dallas.

The cost savings will mostly be reflected in real estate, as the firm is avoiding having to lay off a large number of employees.

“While these decisions are always difficult, these steps will affect approximately 1 percent of our workforce and enable us to focus our resources on the most significant growth opportunities,” Zynga CEO, David Ko, said in a recent statement.

Cityville 2 is just one of the games Zynga decided to shut down after reports of poorly performing games dragged down the company’s bottom line. Ko said the company will focus on games that have a better following in 2013, and that they had set up “guard rails” to better warn them when a game should be closed for lack of popularity.